


A Future Bright And Clear

by RobinTrigue



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: 1920s AU, Flirting, M/M, WWI references, flirting via mutual antagonism, pilot AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 23:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9629534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinTrigue/pseuds/RobinTrigue
Summary: It’s October 1929, and Captain Neville is starting to think he’d rather be back in a dogfight than make this transcontinental flight with a Hollywood asshole, no matter how attractive he may be. But Breezie’s merely concerned about his all-important beauty sleep and the prompt delivery of US mail.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was completely inspired by reading [this astoundingly beautiful piece](https://medium.com/@katierosepipkin/the-forgotten-concrete-arrows-of-early-u-s-airmail-db9cc1d56681#.nf9133eak).

_When Undertaking Very Hard Routes Keep Directions By Good Methods_ _\- Transcontinental Airway pilots’ training mnemonic_

 

Adrian touched down on the tarmac and rubbed his temples furiously, opening the door without looking so the airport staff could unload the mailbags. He’d missed his landmark shortly outside of Elko because of low clouds, and hadn’t been able to re-orient himself until he reached the coast south of the Oregon border. A six hour detour on top of a fourteen hour flight. Bugger it all.

He’d been hoping to actually have a warm meal for once, sitting down and everything, maybe rent a room for a day and sleep in a bed; but he’d been scheduled to make tomorrow’s return delivery as well, so proper rest would have to wait. Just enough time for a piss and a sandwich, and yet another uncomfortable nap in the cargo hold under the emergency blanket until it was time for departure.

He awoke after what felt like seconds to the sound of someone rapping on the metal body of the plane.

“Hey! Fly boy! It’s time to go!”

Adrian groaned and stretched his aching back before opening his eyes. Airport staff had loaded the bags around him without waking him up, that was kind; he could’ve slept through a German shelling he’d been so tired. Of course, he was still tired, a four-hour nap couldn’t fix that, but a strong brew before takeoff would leave him good to go.

“Hello! I’m _tired_ of _waiting_.”

Ah. Right. The noise. Adrian climbed over the bags of letters and opened the hatch to find the most painfully gorgeous man he had ever seen. He couldn’t help but stare for a few moments while the blond adjusted his flyaway scarf, making sure it draped properly over his mink cape. Then he turned his face to scowl at Adrian and the effect was broken.

“What?”

The blond shook his head as if to dislodge a fly, a wisp of hair slipping free from its tie and falling to a rest upon his shoulder. He looked as pretty as a saint. “I have been _waiting_ here for _minutes,_ the least you could do is apologise,” he said with venom.

A few things started to fall into place for Adrian.

“Hang on, aren’t you that one fancy lad from the movies who complains about his fan mail all the time?” he asked.

The lips pursed, slightly different from the scowl. These expressions of scorn were artfully crafted, clearly he got a lot a lot of practice in.

“I’m well within my rights to complain if your ‘company’ –”

“—The US Postal Service—”

“—Isn’t able to fulfil its promises of bringing me important news—”

“—Fan magazines—”

“—From my New York agent in the timely fashion it advertises. So yes, I have complained six or seven times.”

Adrian rubbed at his head again. Other pilots along this route who’d been more than an hour late on their runs had mentioned a crazed starlet who insisted on receiving all his post express, but thus far Adrian had managed to avoid him. But of course, today was the day _that_ luck ran out.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry that your oh-so-important vanity exercise was mildly delayed, now are ya happy enough to leave me alone?”

The starlet sniffed and unfolded some sunglasses onto his face. “Don’t worry, I’ve already lodged a formal complaint, and will be making another when we land in New York, but the reason I’m talking to _you_ , uggo, is so you can fly me there. Now move.”

“What's that now?” Adrian put both hands on the doorway incredulously, making the blond click his tongue with distain. “This isn’t a charter flight, _laddie_ , if you think I’m gonna—”

“Oh, will you just move it already?” said the blond, shoving Adrian aside. Now he was at the top of the fold-out steel steps, it was clear he was about half a foot taller than Adrian, who harrumphed. Just because this wasn’t the time or the place for scrapping didn’t mean he couldn’t have taken this idiot down, easy. “My people sorted it out with your people. I’m _urgently_ needed, you see.”

He smiled now, conspiratorially, and Adrian had to look away rather than be drawn in.

“Darling Xavier’s loaning me out to Fandango’s studio for a few months, because no one _they_ have is good enough to charm the audience with dulcet tones while using a divine physique in a way that—”

“Look, lad,” Adrian interrupted.

“Tyler Breeze.”

“Look, Mr Breeze—”

“My fans call me Breezie,” Tyler sighed.

“Look. Mr Breeze. This is a proper workin’ aircraft, not a—”

“And you are?”

Adrian gritted his teeth. “ _Captain_ Adrian Neville, but I’m not about to—”

“Hop out and get my bags, would you Adrian? And then up, up, and away, or whatever; I have places to be tomorrow. The Big Apple is _dying_ for a bite of this gorgeous face.”

It wasn’t as though Adrian had much time to argue; it was evening already, and the first leg of the journey was the hardest. He needed to concentrate and he needed to _see_ , so after wrestling the bastard’s bags into the fuselage and cursing loudly at whoever would listen, he told Tyler to stay out of his way and stay quiet.

To his surprise, Tyler shrugged and began rearranging the mail bags to give himself a more comfortable ‘beauty rest.’ He seemed to feel that if Adrian wasn’t actively obstructing him from reaching his goals, he wasn’t worth noticing. And that was ideal, really, that was fine. The less Adrian saw of him the better. If he was lucky, Tyler would stay in back the whole way, with the other parcels, and let Adrian get on with his work.

One thing went right, at least: the weather had shifted, leaving his sky miraculously clear. Everything was bathed in a bright, warm light, from the golden hills to the scrublands, rays from the setting sun elongating the shadows so Adrian could read the territory like an open book. He only needed to make minor adjustments to the course for the wind buffets, and just as the sky faded from velvet blue to pitch black, he recognised the faint twinkle of Elko, Nevada, passing below him.

Adrian removed his hand from the control yoke and allowed himself a smile. Everything was simpler up here. Even through the closed cockpit, it felt like the wind was blowing through his hair. He wanted to laugh for no reason at all.

After a few hours of easy flying, Tyler apparently tired of getting his beauty rest. He marched to the cockpit, eye mask at an angle across his forehead, and leant heavily across the back of the pilot’s seat.

"The propellers are too loud."

"You don't want me to turn them off," Adrian snorted. He couldn't be annoyed with the arrogant starlet up here; this was his space.

Tyler ducked down to peer through the glass. It was a quiet night, cool and cloudless; the plane was bathed in starlight so bright Adrian almost felt he could swim in it.

"There's no moon," Tyler said. Adrian didn't reply, only adjusted his pitch slightly. Judging by the Morse from the last signal tower, they were still over the fields and grasslands that made the bulk of Route 18. But that was something Adrian only knew from his dozens of daylight crossings; at night, the land was a vast, black ocean, a void without form below the glittering sky.

 "There's no moon," Tyler repeated, as though his question should have been obvious from the start, "so which one's the North star?"

Adrian glanced around them, scouring his memory for what his aunt had taught him as a child. "The handle of the plough is pointing that way so... That bright one?"

"You don't sound very certain." Anxiety was rising in Tyler's voice, and the smug part of Adrian decided to let it. "Are you sure you know where you're going? Should we land somewhere and make camp for the night?"

"Up ahead." Adrian gestured with one hand. Tilting the nose of the plane down a bit - there would be updraft as they flew over anyway - it soon came into view, glowing brighter than a wildfire, the broad cement arrow and its beacon.

"The Transcontinental Airway System? Or do you not get real newspapers in Hollywood?" Tyler sucked air in through his teeth, but Adrian knew he was safe from any temper tantrums while there was a perceived risk of falling to their deaths. "Miles of electric cable, tonnes of cement... It’s the greatest undertaking in aviation. These lead us right across the country. Only got a few more to place out west and then we'll have clear paths, railroads for the sky. Be done sometime next month."

"Oh," said the blonde, a frown in his voice. "I guess... I thought you'd be looking up at the sky to find your way, not at the ground. "

Adrian shrugged. "I'm already in the sky."

The arrow passed below them, pointing the way to New York and blinking its familiar message: that he was on the right course, and the remaining journey would be simple and clear.

“Go on, sit down.” Adrian patted the empty seat, feeling overcome with generosity. Tyler gawked at him.

“The co-pilot’s seat? But what am I meant to do if you have a mid-air heart attack die?”

“What were you going to do anyway?” laughed Adrian.

Tyler scowled, fixing his hair in a powder-case mirror before sitting down. The Geordie marvelled that he was able to see his reflection in the dim light; then again, the dozy wazzock probably spent so much time looking at himself that it was muscle memory.

“You talk all weird for a Brit.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be Seymour bleedin’ Hicks.”

“You certainly can’t, you look like Gollum.”

“Like a what?” Adrian nudged the yaw slightly to stay on course with the next arrow, then looked to Tyler in bafflement. Even in the dark he could tell Tyler’s face was attractively smug.

“The Hobbit? I’d ask if you got real books in England, but Tolkein is English, so it must be only _you_ who’s illiterate.”

Adrian yanked on the throttle abruptly, causing the plane to jerk and shudder. There was a heavy _whump_ in the tail as several hundred pounds of post jumped a few inches into the air, their landing causing the nose to jerk again.

“Oops,” he said, as deadpan as he could manage. “Turbulence.”

He could hear Tyler shifting in his seat, re-settling himself and turning to peer out the side window, pointedly away from Adrian.

The bright yellow glow of another arrow pulled them from the thin cloud they had flown into, and Tyler let out a small gasp. Neither said anything, which was good, because Adrian would have been forced to admit he was right; it _was_ a beautiful sky. The Milky Way shone bright and jagged across the heavens, like an opening to another world.

Part of him still couldn’t get over the strangeness, the prickle-at-the-back-of-your-neck strangeness of flying without a moon. He had been for a few years now, but it had meant grounding during the war. As a lad he’d hated it, had crossed off the nights on his calendar until it was bright enough to go out hunting German scouts and dodging shells again, craving adventure. But now he... It was nice. Without the moon, he could see all the constellations winking at him, had seen a comet once, and only needed to look at the ground to stay his course across America.

“So bright, up there,” Tyler murmured as they cleared the great lakes.

Adrian spared a glance out while he flicked on his torch, clamping it between his teeth to read his instruments as the air rocked them side to side. “Mmmf.”

“Feels almost like you could touch it.”

“Mmm nnnf.”

“I always wanted to be Buck Rogers, zooming past the stars on a huge rocket ship.”

Adrian stowed the torch; their altitude was stable. “Floating through space in a tin can, forgetting all about gravity...” He thought about it. “I gotta say, being weightless does sound right fun.”

“Yeah,” said Tyler. “Must be nice for astronauts not have to worry about keeping their figure.”

Adrian laughed heartily at first, then suspiciously; it occurred to him that it was entirely possible Tyler had made a joke rather than a mistake, and that he was laughing with the blond instead of at him. Short of getting the torch out, there was no way to tell how good Tyler’s poker face was. Fuck. It had been a pretty good joke.

“So is it true what they say about pilots?” asked Tyler with a smirk. This time, Adrian knew he was smirking because even the dim starlight was bright enough to reflect off those teeth.

“Is it true what they say about Hollywood prettyboys?” Adrian shot back. He was pretty sure it _was_ true, about both of them.

“I’m just _asking,_ ” said Tyler, in a voice that sounded like eyelashes being fluttered. “God forbid anyone _ask_ a simple _question_ ; I would answer _your_ questions if you wanted. Though for me it would be charity, since you must have no idea what it’s like being a pretty boy.”

Shit; Adrian _did_ like the cheeky git after all.

“Well then why doncha?”

“Why don’t I what?” said Tyler, managing to pitch his voice both high with innocence and low with seduction. “Why, _Captain_ Adrian, what is it you want me to _do?_ ”

“Ah, shut yer gob,” Adrian muttered with a grin.

“You’re so unattractive even hearing you burns my beautiful ears,” Tyler replied, not unkindly.

It was a silent flight for a while after that. As dawn broke, sky turning grey then blinding white, Adrian realised that his flying companion had fallen asleep; head resting against the safety glass, breath forming small fogs with every exhale. He’d wrapped his sleep mask around his knuckles, like Adrian had done with rags as a lad whenever a pub brawl broke out. But Tyler probably didn’t know that, unless he’d played a brawler in one of his pictures; he had a voice that came from money, not from chaos.

It was nice, he figured, being in a country where they didn’t have to worry about recovery and skyrocketing inflation. The war had been a blip here, a success rather than... Adrian had made the right choice, when the Post Office had been looking for people to fly their Airco DH4s. Get away from it all. If the worst he had to put up with in the Land of Opportunity was Xavier Hollywood and Fandango Metropolis trying to stick each other with self-absorbed talent, well then.

The landing jolted Tyler awake, and he shot Adrian a look that said with remarkable clarity, _why didn’t you wake me up earlier so I could fix my hair before going outside._ He shrugged, full of schadenfreude, and also full of something else as he watched the actor preening into his mirror, even applying a little bit of paint to his lips.

“Well? How do I look?”

“You’re uh,” Adrian said, briefly dazzled by the man’s talent at wielding a mascara brush. Tyler shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Why am I asking you, you don’t know anything.” And that was all the farewell he gave Adrian, who hadn’t expected a thank you but _still_ —

“Wait!” the pilot cried, as Tyler shoved the mail collectors aside to disembark. “Ah – you’ll be in New York how long?”

Tyler rolled his eyes again, but Adrian was getting better now he’d figured out his character a bit more and could tell he meant it in a flattered way. “You could _read_ some of the fan magazines you carry, you know. It’s not like flying a plane is _that_ hard, you could _educate_ yourself along the way. Besides, I already said: I’ll be here through December, maybe even stay for some of the thirties if the parties are as good as people claim. Though Xavier would miss me terribly!”

Adrian still kind of wanted to punch him for being such a rude little git, let him take _that_ complaint to the USPS, but he resisted the temptation. “So p’rhaps I’ll see you on the Bowery?”

Tyler’s eyes rolled in actual offence this time. “ _Please_ , like I’d go to any dive that lets an uggo like _you_ in.”

Adrian scowled. Tyler blew a kiss to the airport man who unloaded his monogrammed leather case.

“But I’ll probably be here quite often to complain about your poor delivery skills,” Tyler added. “And I will need someone to fly me back to you know, actual civilisation.”

“I dread the very thought, Mr Breeze,” Adrian said. Tyler smiled at him, and it was a real smile for once, a dazzling, befuddling smile that raised him from beautiful to angelic; Adrian felt all the wind get knocked out of him. Then Tyler slipped his sunglasses on and stalked down the runway to the terminal, still without saying goodbye.

Maybe he _should_ have woken him up earlier, Adrian thought as he packed the emergency blanket back into its case. Tyler would have probably liked to see the skyscrapers shining like beacons in the morning sunlight, would have probably liked to see this silver city from a god-like vantage point. Perhaps next time. For now, Adrian was ready to collapse into the nearest bed he could find, into the couch in the pilots’ lounge if he had to. They’d made good time for a trip without much tailwind, damn good time, but he only had a couple days before he had to fly out again and he intended to spend them catching up on as much missed sleep as possible.

It would be easier soon though; November 1929, the Airway would be finished, and he wouldn’t have to worry about flights like yesterday’s. The arrows would stretch from coast to coast, guiding him on a direct path towards a clear and organised future. Everything would be easy.

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about aviation except that this is definitely the wrong kind of plane. Sorry about all my clumsy errors!


End file.
